I installed FreeBSD 8.0-RC1 on my machine, but unfortunately it doesn't see my graphics card. I was wondering whether anybody on this list might have a similar machine (specs below) on which they could install any of the BSDs. NetBSD 5.0 recognizes this card, but not the wireless one (Atheros AR9281), which I need.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

Yes, installing the nvidia driver was the first thing I tried, but the "make install clean" command stops with the message "nvidia driver 185.18.36 is only for i386 and you are running amd64"

What is interesting is that NetBSD 5.0.1 recognizes this card and runs X perfectly.
I would be very happy if I could run NetBSD on this machine, but unfortunately it does not recognize my wireless card (Atheros AR9281) - which I absolutely need.

I guess one cannot have everything in life

One thing I noticed though is that on the NetBSD-HEAD man page for ath it shows that my wireless card should now be supported. Is there a way to extract only that driver from NetBSD-HEAD and insert it into my NetBSD-5 stable?? I don't feel comfortable running HEAD as I am a complete beginner. Also, my apologies if the question is stupid!!

Yes, installing the nvidia driver was the first thing I tried, but the "make install clean" command stops with the message "nvidia driver 185.18.36 is only for i386 and you are running amd64"

nVidia provides blog only for i386, so if you want to stick with amd64, you will have to use open source nv driver from Xorg (no 3D accelration).

Quote:

Originally Posted by ionflux

What is interesting is that NetBSD 5.0.1 recognizes this card and runs X perfectly.

NetBSD can at most use nv driver which is also available on FreeBSD.

What errors you get on FreeBSD and how you are setting up the Xorg?

What does not work?

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

I am now updating the sources to 8.0-RC2 and will recompile soon.
Let's see if something changes.

This will not help, its not FreeBSD related, its Xorg package related, and from RC1 to RC2 nv driver has not been updated.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

I can only suggest how I would build and install that: namely, edit the makefile in the port (it may only be a mater of changing the version number) and compiling it there.
However, the reason that we still have an older nv is that that [edit: probably] doesn't work, and more work is needed to port nv.

__________________The only dumb question is a question not asked.
The only dumb answer is an answer not given.

1) I noticed that my NetBSD installation (with X server working) is also using the vesa driver! So also in that case, even if X works well, it will probably have limited capabilities. I don't need 3D acceleration though ...

2) Can I install FreeBSD i386 on my machine, even if it has an AMD Phenom X4 processor? Would it result in a performance hit?

1) I noticed that my NetBSD installation (with X server working) is also using the vesa driver! So also in that case, even if X works well, it will probably have limited capabilities. I don't need 3D acceleration though ...

The open source 'nv' driver only supports accelerated 2D and XVideo, they only way to get 3D acceleration is via the proprietary driver released by NVidia.

The 'vesa' driver is a really dumb 'framebuffer', almost nothing will be offloaded to your GPU.. it will steal CPU time away from other applications.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ionflux

2) Can I install FreeBSD i386 on my machine, even if it has an AMD Phenom X4 processor? Would it result in a performance hit?

AMD64 is just an extension of the original x86 architecture, it can run 32-bit operating systems just fine

As mentioned, NVidia has a proprietary 2D/3D driver.. for FreeBSD (..32-bit) but I don't recommend using it.

Eventually a new reverse engineering project 'nouveau' will replace the 'nv' driver which NVidia barely maintains anymore.